


The Riddle we can guess

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Art, F/M, Friendship, Love Triangles, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 18:50:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8928913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: She'd always liked to be enigmatic, but there was no great mystery to her motive this time, only how to respond.





	

“For you, I told you, I chose Mansion House for you,” Lisette said. 

It had been several weeks since she’d arrived with some tale of a mutual friend letting her know he was in Alexandria, of breaths held and poignant sighs, of sidelong glances and the scent of night-blooming jasmine, her favorite a few years ago, warring with Mansion House’s usual fragrance, blood and lye, boiled linen and boiled mutton in equal proportion. They were alone now, as she’d wanted them to be, without an imminent interruption and he saw that she was beautiful, but that she was a liar.

“No, you didn’t. Perhaps you believe that, but it’s a lie. You chose for yourself, why, exactly, I can’t say,” he replied. 

She was so close, he could take her in his arms and kiss her without the least effort; he remembered what she felt like, fine-boned, her skin hot against him, the way she pressed a hand to his lower back to command him to her. She’d arrived one day and had talked about her drawings, her vocation and her ambition, and Mary had found a bedroom, fresh linens, enough herbs to make a passable tisane. Lisette had taken her sketchbook and pen and made images he could not unsee; the architecture of Tibbets’s cheek, how many years Matron had left, how sad Mary still was and perhaps always would be, her loveliness visible to someone else in a way that made him powerfully, irrationally jealous.

“It’s the truth,” Lisette insisted, shifting so she was that much closer, “Jed, cheri, you must know that. I am flawed, immodest and selfish, inconsiderate, but honest. We have always been frank with each other, about our desires. I am not ashamed of what I want,” she said. He thought of Mary, earlier in the day, having changed a dozen dressings, sorted instruments after the day’s surgeries, at the front door before going to nurse the sick contraband, saying, “Let me go. I came here to work, let me. It’s what I’m good for,” her eyes tired, her hair mussed, apron stained. She had seen how Lisette looked at him and how he had responded, his foolish pride, the childish wish to be first.

“Lisette. You love the memory of a man, not who I am now, a Union officer. I must do my duty, that is what I want,” he said. It would be so easy to kiss her, to taste her, to lift her skirts and lose himself in her willing flesh, but he didn’t want to be lost, to wander away…He’d done that, the needle was more powerful than the joy in any woman, and he’d learned how it felt, to be so untethered, to feel his own soul was at a distance, the far side of the moon, and integrity foreign, the misery of forestalled reunion.

“Why is your art not enough—you cared for it so much before, you left our bed to paint, to fly to the horse market like Morisot, but now it is only in service to this? To me? I am not falsely humble, I should not be worth so much. Who have you listened to, who told you this,” he gestured at the slim space between them, “was the better bargain?”

“Everyone. That is to be a woman and so I have accepted it and decided, if I am to have a man, it should be you, the one who understood me best, constrained me least, inspired me most with your own passion to know—whatever you wanted, who hungered for knowledge, for beauty, for pleasure. Aren’t you still hungry, cheri?”

Was he? It seemed a long time ago but he remembered being that man, the delight he’d taken in her, the operating theater and the Opéra, cold white wine and the grey clouds over the Seine, Notre Dame’s stones, the sealing wax on the letters that told him he was far away from the home that he no longer belonged in. He would have married Lisette then but she hadn’t wanted that and he knew it. Now, he’d only recently freed himself from the marriage that had strangled him and every day, the most pressing need was to save this boy, sew that man, try to mend everything with the suture, the curved needle that the belly liked and the groin. And there was Mary, since she’d arrived, laboring, arguing, seeking to remake the world the way she felt was just and kind; he’d wounded her as badly as he could and she still tended him. She should perhaps want someone better than he was but he could not want another woman, no matter how beautiful.

“Not for this, for you, though I beg your pardon for saying it so bluntly. I want a country of countrymen, not this bloody maelstrom, and I want men to live under my hands and not die with my arms deep in their bellies. I want a home and I want the woman in it to choose me because flawed as I am, she hopes when I am with her, and not because I am the least of her worries,” he said. Lisette looked at him appraisingly, reached a hand to touch his cheek; Mary would not have done either.

“A pretty speech, a patriot’s, no? Should she like it better, the nurse with the dark eyes, all ideals and conviction? Will it be enough for her to put you first, as you want to be? As you would be with me?”

“No. She wouldn’t put me first, for that, not for anything,” he said and knew it to be true as he did so. “But she has seen what I have done, what I am capable of, and she is still waiting for me at the end of the day. And the day is not over until I see her.” Mary, lifting her eyes to him, always with recognition, the companion of his soul, was the essential aspect he’d missed before, all the before there was. He wouldn’t give her up, he wouldn’t risk her.

“I told you something else, that I would try not to disturb you. I don’t think now that I can, but I will try to keep that promise,” Lisette said. He lifted her hand and kissed the back of it. What she could make with it, how much more alone than if he held it…

“Thank you. I’ve never known you to break your word once you’ve given it,” he replied. 

“Yes, there are degrees of deceit. That is not mine, though perhaps you are right, I may deceive myself. Time, none of us can trick, though she may, she does trick us. I did love you so well,” she mused. He wished they might be friends but he could not see how, not with the War, not with her art, not with Mary between them.

“And I loved you, not well enough. But not anymore, Lisette. And not again.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, that promo on Instagram was very provocative and I really am hoping they do more than exotic French artistic floozy with Lisette, but in the interim, I offer up this...
> 
> Title from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
